A Modest Proposal: `Food Is Different'

April 23, 1994|By Merrill Matthews Jr. and Merrill Matthews Jr. is the health policy director of the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, Texas.

Were our country beginning from scratch today, so that we had to consider how each segment of the economic system would or should work, doubtless many politicians and food policy analysts would be asserting: Food is different.

And because food is different, it could never work under the free enterprise system. Indeed, they would insist, because of the special nature of the food industry, it should not even be permitted to be part of the free market. Food-like health care-is just too important to leave to the whims and irregularities of the marketplace. No, they would continue, the only way to ensure that there is plenty of food for everyone at an affordable price would be to place control of the food industry in the hands of the government.

Just consider the following points:

- Lack of nutrition education. Very few Americans are trained as nutritionists. Indeed, most Americans have at best only a basic knowledge of nutrition, and almost no knowledge of the digestive system and body chemistry. How can the average American, therefore, be expected to make wise decisions when purchasing food? Many will purchase the wrong foods, substituting potato chips for potatoes, rice crispies for rice and fruit punch for fruit. No, some politicians and food policy analysts would assert, nutrition is just too important to trust consumers with those decisions. They must be guided by government-approved, trained nutritionists.

- Supplier-induced demand. Because people who sell food under a private system-from the farmer to the grocer-would make more money when people buy more food, food providers would have a strong incentive to persuade customers to purchase more food. Consumers would be inundated with countless advertisements from providers' nutritionists recommending that they (the customers) reach ever deeper into their pockets and purchase more food. Since consumers, as noted above, have very little nutritional knowledge, they would be overwhelmed by those recommendations and would placidly submit to almost all of them, resulting in a country filled with badly nourished people spending a rapidly increasing share of its gross domestic product on food.

- Food is a necessity. Except for air and water, what is more basic to human needs than food? People have to have food every day of their lives (or nearly every day). If profit-motivated business people, rather than the government, were in control of the food industry they would push the prices higher and higher. And because people have to have food, they would be forced to pay those inflated prices. Sure, food policy analysts would argue, competition works well in most segments of the economy, keeping quality up and prices down. But food is different. People must have it, meaning that greedy business people would have consumers over a barrel. Pay the outrageous prices or die. No, food is just too essential to human existence to leave it to the private sector.

- The quality of food must be maintained. The way business people make a profit is by raising prices or cutting costs. And one of the ways they cut costs is by cutting quality. Therefore, the food policy analysts would argue, without the government overseeing the growth, distribution and manufacture of food and food products, for-profit grocery stores would provide only the lowest quality food. And because people have to have food, there would be no room for argument. They would simply have to purchase what the grocery store offered.

- Access to food is a basic human right. Since food is so important to human existence, the food policy analysts would continue, it is absolutely essential that we as a society, creating a food system, must recognize food as a fundamental human right. Thus, if people are hungry and in need of food, they should have the right to walk into a grocery store and demand that they be given not just a few basic staples, but as much food as they want of the best the store has to offer. Of course, that would mean that the cost of that donated food would be shifted to the paying customers, but that is the only "fair" option available to ensure that those who need it have access to food.

- Everyone's food bill ought to be equal. One of the problems we face in the food industry is that some people eat more food than others. Whether a result of genetic determination, bodily needs, gluttony or the way their eating habits were conditioned in childhood, it is indisputable that some people want or require more food than others. If we leave that problem to the vagaries of the market, the politicians would say, then some people would have to pay more than others, for no other reason than they consume more. That clearly would not be fair.

The only fair way to deal with the problem is to charge everyone the same price, regardless of how much food they eat. Of course, that would mean that light eaters would have to be overcharged so that heavy eaters could be undercharged, but fairness requires that the government create a few distortions in the food industry.

So there you have it, an equitable food system that would ensure high quality, low prices and ample quantity for everyone. One thing we know for sure, the politicians and food policy analysts would confidently state, if we left the food industry to profit-motivated, private sector grocery stores, the prices would be high, the quality poor and most people would be starving in the streets.